“Thomas Gray, parsone off Libertone,” a member of the church militant, who in more than one instance seems to have thrown aside his bell and book for the purpose of sharing in the brave struggles and hardy adventures of the Scottish patriot. But I can adduce much more solid proof than this unstable philological basis affords, for stating that, as far back at least as the latter half of the twelfth century, the disease was not only known in Scotland, but that hospitals were by that time actually erected for the seclusion of the victims of it. The hospital of Auldnestun, in Lauderdale, had, as I have already stated, three carrucates of land granted to it, as appears from the Melrose Chartulary, by Walter, the son of Alan. The date of this grant, as of most others in the old chartularies, is not preserved, but it is a fixed and well-ascertained fact in Scottish history that the donor of it, the first of the illustrious, and afterwards royal line of Stewarts, died himself as a Cluniac monk in Melrose Abbey in the year 1177.[121] William the Lion, who died in 1214, confirmed, as we have seen, a grant to the leper-house of Aldcambus; and the hospital of Rothfan, near Elgin, was evidently established during, if not prior to, the reign of his son and successor, Alexander II. In the chapter of gifts to this Rothfan hospital, by John Byseth, Alexander is spoken of as the reigning prince, the preamble to the grant declaring that the endowment was bestowed “for the love of charity, for the soul of King William, and for the salvation of my noble lord King Alexander” (pro salute domini mei Alexandri nobilis Regis).[122] Alexander II. died in 1249, so that by this time the disease was certainly spread to the more northern parts of the kingdom. All Scottish records of these earlier times are almost, as I have already observed, so entirely lost, that it now seems impossible to ascertain whether any leper-houses existed in this kingdom at a date antecedent to those to which I have thus alluded. That this was the case, however, is not improbable. Before the first notice of the earliest Scotch leper-house that I have been able to trace—viz. that of Auldnestun, about 1170, similar establishments were abundant in England. The charters of many of them appear to have been either granted or confirmed in the reign of Henry I., who died in 1154, and was a contemporary of the Scotch Kings, Edgar, Alexander I., and David I.; and it is not unworthy of remark that two, if not more, lazar-houses were founded in England by natives of Scotland prior to the date of the earliest Scotch leper-house that I have been able to discover. For Malcolm IV. founded and endowed one in his principality of Huntingdon in 1165;[123] and sixty years earlier, or in 1101,[124] Matilda, the “gode Queene Maud” of Henry I., and daughter of Malcolm III. of Scotland, established the hospital of St. Giles, Bishopsgate, for forty lepers, a chaplain, clerk, and messengers.